We're now a full week into Inktober.
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You may have noticed
but I've been keeping it really simple
I'm not following any specific prompts unless
I find one that just sparks my interest for that day.
And I'm kind of just letting my art...
Make itself in a way.
Like there's ways to get inspired
and sometimes when you're inspired you want to draw.
What I've been kinda using the inktober challenge
for me is to kind of just sit down,
and try to draw something.
It's not always going to come easy and
you're not always gonna have a ton of inspiration
pushing you forward
and I'm kind of trying to take this challenge as telling me
that, that's okay.
You can just sit down and draw for fun.
You don't have to have big grand scheme and idea
of what it is that you're gonna draw.
You can just draw something.
Trying to think,
but I think last year was my very first successful Inktober
where I drew something every single day.
I used the prompts words
and it had 31 drawings at the end of the (month)
But I wasn't happy with all of them
and I didn't enjoy making all of them,
which I think is equally important.
I think people put a lot of stress on the inktober challenge
just because a lot of artists do it.
It's like all over the place,
heavier at the beginning of October
and it kind of fades out near the end
it's there and it's in your face.
So if your aren't accomplishing it yourself,
you can kind of feel guilty about it,
or feel a little poo-poo about yourself.
I think what people are forgetting,
is that it's supposed to be something that challenges you
to create something that you might not have made before
and for me just sitting down and trying to draw every day
even if it doesn't always turn out
it's kind of a fun thing to do in shorter spurts
like 30 days and 30 days is a long time. Okay.
I'm not going - I'm not selling that short.
I'm just not one of those people that can draw
every single day forever. [Laughs]
I draw a lot but like thinking that I have to
is what like makes me not want to.
I don't know
The part that people really forget
is that Inktober isn't supposed to be
if you need to skip a day skip a day,
we're talking about your future art growth here.
You don't need to sacrifice your current mental state.
Okay, just enjoy it.
Skip it if you need to.
That's what I've been doing.
So you can kind of see how this sketch is evolving.
I didn't have a general plan, kind of just a vibe.
Like sort of retro feeling
and I've been sitting down my characters a lot more.
I like the silhouette of a scrunched up character
instead of just standing there.
Don't get me wrong,
I like drawing characters just standing there.
I could do that all day,
I'm trying to challenge myself
to draw more casual poses.
Like sitting down, slouching and things like that.
And if you want to see
all the Inktober drawings I've made so far
and the ones I plan on doing in the future,
you can follow me on Instagram.
I'm trying to post as often as possible.
At least for this month. Mm-hmm.
So feel free to check that out,
if you're hungry for more waffles
[Hahaha, sharp inhale]
(I see what I did there.)
I added a circle behind her
to try and even out the composition
but I realized there's just still a little too much white space
on the right.
(Am I a problem to you?)
so I decided to give her a kitty cat
and as soon as I did this I thought,
maybe she's like a witch from the 1950s
and she's got a little house cat
and then it made me think of Bewitched.
I wish I had thought of it earlier because
then I could have drawn some actual Bewitched fan art.
I don't know if you've ever seen that
but when I was younger,
I was kind of obsessed with that show
and I Dream of Jeannie.
I went through a phase
The show's probably not as good as I remember.
So now that the sketch is done,
I lightly erase it and begin inking on top.
I used a col-erase pencil and
I ran into a few issues where it wasn't quite erasing
as much as I need it to.
Which happens and I should have expected it.
[Laughs]
So they end up showing through even after the ink
and I'll show you what I do with that when we get there.
but I'm starting at the top left of the drawing
as always because I am right-handed
and I want to avoid putting my hand into wet ink
as often as possible.
That seems like a weird way to say that.
I want to avoid putting my hand in the ink
as much as possible
I'm a very impatient artist and I know that about myself.
[Laughs]
So this is a very important step.
I have my little bottle of ink there,
on the left side of the screen.
It's a Dr. PH Martin's bottle,
but I've been refilling it with Speedball ink.
So I'm kind of okay dipping my pen in it.
I've heard that you shouldn't dip your pen in your ink
because it can cause bacteria to grow in there
and we're not doing any kind of science experiment right now.
So you want to avoid that but
I kind of go through the black ink so quickly,
It doesn't really matter for me.
And then I have a large Speedball bottle
that I do not contaminate in any way and it works for me.
It was around this point where I was doing the line-art
and I noticed that the limbs were kind of long.
So I guess this is a tall character.
The only problem was it wasn't intentional
and I run into this problem a lot when I draw on my desk
because if you've ever drawn flat on a surface,
while you're sitting upright in a chair,
you're looking down at your drawing from an angle,
and the perspective is going to be different than
when you're looking at it from straight above
like the camera angle is.
So the camera is seeing it exactly as it is,
whereas from my point of view,
It's going to be slightly distorted
and any elements on the lower half of the drawing,
are going to appear larger.
than the elements at the top of the drawing
like her head.
The biggest problem that this will cause me
is like usually really, really long necks
and really, really long legs
and weird things like that.
This drawing has a really long torso
because the legs are scrunched up.
So they can't really be elongated as much as I usually do.
So it ends up being that whole middle section
is a little bit long and you might notice that.
I'm not complaining,
I'm just taking a mental note
that I need to be more aware of that
and like check up at my camera.
I need to make sure that I'm taking more breaks
and like lifting up the paper and looking straight at it
and making sure that it's the way I want it to look
before I go in and add ink.
Now I'm actually taking a paint brush
and applying ink in a circle shape around the character.
This centers the character on the page even though
they're kind of leaning off to the left.
Then there's that white space above the cat.
By filling in a circle behind them,
it centers them on the page
and just kind of evens out the composition.
When working with ink, it is very, very, very, very, very
important [Laughs]
to wait for everything to dry.
So I gave this a good couple hours,
but they recommend you wait overnight. [Laughs]
(If you're a professional.)
Hmm.
After a few hours, I went over and erased it
and I didn't have any problems
because I made sure that it was dry.
I made sure there was no wet clumps anywhere. [Laughs]
And this is when I noticed that some of the pencil
is not erasing as much as I want it to.
So I decided,
why don't I incorporate it more into the illustration,
instead of trying to hide it?
I decide to color in the cat
with the same pencil I'd used for sketching .
Which is a purple col-erase colored pencil,
and I also did a little bit of shading. [Chuckles]
Kind of just filled it in
and made it look like a separate element
compared to like the character
and really like how it stands out.
But I also went in and used this pencil
to add like blush to the skin.
So around her nose and her cheeks
and then like elbows and toes and things like that.
I think what are the things that inspires me to draw
is faces and coloring skin.
Like if I ever wanted to draw painterly,
it's always the face that I want to draw
and then I'll finish like painting the face and then
I'll be kind of burnt out with that drawing
and I wont finish the rest of it.
I have so many started and not finished
like full body drawings, that only the face is painted,
[Laughs]
Abandoned art.
It's just what I'm drawn to
It's just the part I like to do the most.
There's nothing thing wrong with that
and I don't regret starting those drawings
I just have no interest in finishing them.
Now I'm moving into adding in the shading
and the way I'm going to do this is by mixing the ink
with water to get different tones.
I actually ended up with three different tones,
a light, a medium and a dark.
They're all pretty light
because I mixed a lot of water in there because
I don't want them to get mixed in with that circle background
or with any of the line art.
I want them to definitely stand alone.
I started by coloring in the hair.
I thought this might be one of the darker
elements of the drawing, but looking back with hindsight,
[Laughs]
I think I should have left the hair completely white
and then colored in the skin darker, because the hair
interacts with that dark circle behind it the most
so having that white contrast I think,
would have been really cool.
I also used this same color to add shading to that
back leg that she's sitting on.
This separates it from the front leg and
gives it some depth.
Here's me lazily using my spray bottle to fill my pallete.
I hate getting up and going to the sink.
It's like 17 steps there and back,
that's over 30 steps.
My pedometer is not prepared for that sort of physical activity
(So I like to use my spray bottle.) [Laughs]
Anyway, I mixed a darker color this time
and I'm using this to color in the character's outfit.
I pictured the outfit having...
Really bold, big shapes like circles and triangles,
like a really out there vintage pattern
but when I started coloring in the skirt,
I threw that out the window [Laughs]
and then when I got up to the top I remembered it.
So I started adding in circles,
but I didn't put enough thought into it.
It was kind of like: "Oh, oops I forgot."
And then I started adding in these circles
and then they look like this.
Which I don't hate
but I pictured there being like a mixture, originally,
of shapes like triangles and circles and squares.
Something like that.
It does look bad,
I think it does have a bit of a vintage vibe that I'm digging
I think at this point I realized there wasn't enough contrast.
So I went in and darkened the entire skirt section of her dress
I picked her being in a dress.
It's like an empire waist - What's that? Cowls neck?
What is that called?
I guess it's just an oval neckline...?
I thought that was like a-
It's like a boat neckline or something?
Anyway...
I'm gonna look up boat neck.
Yeah, it is a boat neck.
Okay. [Laughs]
And it basically just added darkness
wherever I thought it needed like just a little bit of extra depth
and I think by darkening up the hair,
it actually made her face pop a little bit more.
Which gave me the idea to start shading in the face.
I know I had already done it with the pencil,
but I thought by adding in a little bit of ink,
I could really make it pop even more
and give it some more dimension.
Then I used a white gel pen.
My current favorite is the Sakura Decorese white gel pen.
and I used this to adds a little magic sparkles in the sky.
They could be stars
like she's sitting on the roof or something
looking up at the sky.
I don't know. That's up for interpretation.
I mean in reality,
it's just a bunch of lines and blobs on a piece of paper.
So if you can get anything from it, I'll be happy.
Then I waited for it all to dry again
This didn't take quite as long
because the ink is now saturated with water,
which is going to dry faster than ink usually does.
So about like an hour, maybe, later,
I went in with my Sakura Decorese white gel pen again,
and I started adding in little like pops and like pizazz,
you know, like hair strands coming off of her hair,
that makes it look less like a solid shape
and little highlights on her cheeks and her nose and like
hands, and kneecaps and things like that. [Laughs]
I also had like a little stripe at the hem of her skirt
with like contrasting thread
and I tried to resist it, but I just couldn't. [Laughs]
I added a big white line all around the entire character,
separating it from that black circle.
And it's just - it just pops. I just love it. It looks cartoony.
It looks like a sticker.
I'm not trying to recreate real life here. [Laughs]
If that's what I wanted, I would have got into photography.
Oh, then I actually used my col-erase pencil
to add a little bit more pink here and there,
basically use it to fix anything I forgot. [Laughs]
Definitely not my best, but also not my worst so.
I'll take it.
I think a big thing about Inktober is just being able to
put what you drew today behind you,
learn from it without letting it overwhelm you
and then starting up again tomorrow.
I think that's like the biggest lesson
that Inktober taught me last year
because I had quite a few where I was just like,
!I don't like this" but I shared it anyway,.
Not that you have to post the art you don't like.
I don't think anyone should ever be forced
to post something that they don't like.
I feel like I have a platform where it's important
that I show you that not all art is perfect
and not all art is terrible.
So it's just, you - there's mediocre, okay.
You can have mediocre art.
I think giving up is the only way to fail at art.
If you create something and it's not great,
you've probably learned something from it.
Even if it doesn't feel like it
and feel free to hide it under your bed.
[Laughs] Nothing wrong with that.
I guess I added in some more shading.
Oh, I like that. I forgot about that.
I added shading on the dress.
Gives it a lot more depth
and makes it look less like a flat shape
and here we have my finished drawing for today's Inktober.
Again. [Laughs]
Anyway, thank you guys for watching.
I hope you enjoyed coming along with me on today's inktober journey,
if you want to follow the entire Inktober journey,
I'll be posting as much as possible over on my Instagram
and I'll have a link in the description for that.
Good luck with all your little inky drawings. [Laughs]
Now I want to dress squid.
Anyway, thank you guys for watching.
I'll see you guys all next week
and hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles.
Bye!
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